These days, people literally hold their finances in their hands. Whether it’s making purchases, accepting small business payments, or simply checking account balances, personal wealth has gone mobile. With the speed and ease of transferring money on the go, it’s increasingly difficult to keep tabs on your budget—much less your larger financial goals. Fortunately, the same devices that make it easy to spend money can also help you manage it. Here are the top 4 free budgeting apps for Android and iOS:
1. Mint. With over 10 million users, Mint is one of the most popular personal finance programs today. After a quick initial setup, Mint automatically aggregates all of your financial information in a single place. Whether it’s your savings and checking accounts, investments, auto loans, mortgage, or more, Mint helps you manage it all. Make a budget, and set and track goals—anytime and anywhere. With bank-level security and the inability to actually transfer funds, Mint is a safe and secure way to keep tabs on your finances. Mint’s handy alert system notifies you of fees, reminds you to pay bills, and tells you if you are going over budget. It can also help secure your finances by sending you fraud alerts if it detects unusual account activity.
2. Check. Established in 2008, Check works to keep you within your budget. Similar to other personal finance apps on the market, Check pulls all of your financial information together and actively monitors your accounts. It helps you avoid late fees by notifying you when bills are due, and letting you pay them on the spot or schedule future payments. Check also sends real-time alerts via push notifications that make you aware of potential fraud. And, if your mobile device is ever lost or stolen, your account is pin protected and can be safeguarded remotely.
3. Manilla. Yet another way to manage all of your financial information, Manilla supports more than 3,500 business accounts. This means that, in addition to your banking information, you can use Manilla to handle the day-to-day expenses that always creep into your budget. This includes things like your babysitter, dog walker, and loyalty programs from your favorite stores. In addition to these customizable features, Manilla also offers free unlimited online document storage to truly keep everything you need organized and in one place. And it protects your data by encrypting it and storing it on a dedicated server in a secure facility.
4. Toshl Finance. Toshl Finance takes a different spin on your ordinary personal finance apps by using colorful and interactive graphics to make budgeting a bit more fun. Along with the standard features you would expect to find with a money-managing app, Toshl Finance makes it easy to keep track of travel expenses by allowing you to make entries in any currency, and it provides daily exchange rates for 34 of the most-used currencies. Toshl Finance also lets you export your data as a CSV so you can do more calculations with your data outside of the app.
No matter which app you choose, having a budgeting tool at your fingertips allows you to track purchases and expenses in real time. This level of convenience can be appreciated by anyone who has tried to sit down at the end of each month and compile everything spent from receipts and carbon copy checks. No more excuses for not having the time to budget. All you need to do is download an app to start tracking where your money goes every day.
